Injuries from hand grenades in civilian settings

Abstract

Four cases of hand grenade detonations in civilian life with homicidal intent are reported. The detonations always occurred in close proximity to the victims but there were only two fatalities out of seven victims directly attributable to the hand grenades. The relatively low mortality rate results from the ballistic characteristics of hand grenade missiles such as low mass and sectional density. This leads to rapid deceleration and thus to a poor penetration capacity of intermediate targets and tissue. Window glass at a distance of 2 m was not perforated in one case and the vast majority of fragment wounds showed a short wound tract of small diameter. The potential for physical activity can be unaffected even after a detonation inside a car. However, body parts almost in contact with the hand grenade, such as in a struggle, suffer large lacerations and comminuted fractures. At a distance, the chance of striking a vulnerable body region is increased by the multiple missiles but the wounding potential clearly decreases with increasing distance due to rapid deceleration and decreasing fragment cloud density. The effective range of detonation shock waves from hand grenades is very short and can only contribute to wounding in close-to-contact detonations. The forensic reconstruction is based on the directed radial character of the forces generated and on the sharply decreasing intensity of these forces with increasing distance from the detonation.